What to consider Joint attention Verbal development (Grammar MLU) Non-verbal language Theory of mind Pro-social communication Conversational skills
A language sample is a record of the words your child says spontaneously. For this assessment, it does not matter if those words are clearly spoken. What your child says (expressive language) is more important than how clearly he is saying the words (speech). A language sample can be informal – the result of hearing a child use language spontaneously in a familiar situation. Also it can be formal – taken during a planned, structured activity such as retelling a story. To take a “formal” language sample find a time when your little one is at his most talkative You don’t need to use only one conversation for your language sample -- use various situations if you want. The easiest way is to record the conversation. Try to gather at least 25 sentences OR 100 utterances ( I know that there was confusion here and that is my fault). Here is an article that explains the process. We will go over it again in class. http://www.speech-therapy-information-and-resources.com/mean-length-of-utterance.html Record what you were doing ( playing with bus) Record what you said. Make an analysis of what was said. Don’t worry about the analysis my purpose of having you do this is for you to ‘experience’ the differences in language. I want to know what you are thinking about in the language. Use language sample data sheet
[Shouting] BALL...BALL... (1) (1) using tone of voice to get message across
Mother:
Stop that.
That's not the way to ask.
What do you say?
Kim?
Kim:
[sticks his chin out at her] non verbal communication
Mother:
What's the magic word?
Kim:
[Silence]
Mother:
May I please have the ball Mummy.
Kim:
[More silence]
What to consider Joint attention Verbal development (Grammar MLU) Non-verbal language Theory of mind Pro-social communication Conversational skills
MLU: means Mean Length of Utterance, which simply means count the number of words and divide by the number of sentences / or phrases/ complete thoughts the child has said. So if you do 50 utterances and you count 100 words the MLU would be 2 Me go ( 2 words) I want to go to the zoo. ( 7 words) Yup. ( pause) I hungry . ( Two sentences 1st has 1 word, 2nd 2 words) Purpose: The expectation is NOT that you are able to make a complex analysis of language but more that you have an understanding of what a typical child’s conversation might be. This is to allow us to have a dialogue about language skills. It will serve as a comparison even in terms of how you were able to gather the sample.
Language Samples
The professional literature in speech language pathology provides several best practices guidelines with regard to obtaining and analyzing valid language
sampling procedures (for example, Evans& Craig, 1992; Miller, 1996) to use as abasis for eligibility decisions:
• To obtain a valid sample for analysis, elliptical responses should be minimized by avoiding wh-question prompts
and yes/no questions.
When children are prompted to converse through frequent what-where-which-or-when questions, the resulting language data (including MLU)
is often skewed and yields invalid findings. Alternative conversational prompts,including modeling and “Iwonder about…” statements are
preferable.
The standards for language sample is that each sample should consist of between 50 and 100 consecutive utterances in one
sampling context.
• Sampling in more than one context and using more than one sample elicitation task (e.g., free play, conversation, narrative) is important since
a sampling context itself constrains the characteristics of the language that a student will use (Miller, et al. 2005; Nippold,Hesketh, Duthie, & Mansfield,2005). In order to use any of the several normed databases for comparing a student’s language sample performance to peers,
it is essential that speech language pathologists use that same elicitation tasks and contexts as those on which the norms were developed.
• At some point in the language sampling process the speech-language pathologist must create for the student sampling situations that
stress and challenge the student’s language use and language system (Lahey, 1990).Informal play, interview, or
conversational situations may
Summary:
Joint attention
Verbal development (Grammar MLU)
Non-verbal language
Theory of mind
Pro-social communication
Conversational skills
A language sample is a record of the words your child says spontaneously.
For this assessment, it does not matter if those words are clearly spoken. What your child says (expressive language) is more important than how clearly he is saying the words (speech).
A language sample can be informal – the result of hearing a child use language spontaneously in a familiar situation. Also it can be formal – taken during a planned, structured activity such as retelling a story.
To take a “formal” language sample find a time when your little one is at his most talkative
You don’t need to use only one conversation for your language sample -- use various situations if you want. The easiest way is to record the conversation.
Try to gather at least 25 sentences OR 100 utterances ( I know that there was confusion here and that is my fault).
Here is an article that explains the process. We will go over it again in class.
http://www.speech-therapy-information-and-resources.com/mean-length-of-utterance.html
Record what you were doing ( playing with bus)
Record what you said.
Make an analysis of what was said. Don’t worry about the analysis my purpose of having you do this is for you to ‘experience’ the differences in language. I want to know what you are thinking about in the language.
Use language sample data sheet
Email me the samples: rakovic@cox.net
What to consider
Joint attention
Verbal development (Grammar MLU)
Non-verbal language
Theory of mind
Pro-social communication
Conversational skills
MLU: means Mean Length of Utterance, which simply means count the number of words and divide by the number of sentences / or phrases/ complete thoughts the child has said. So if you do 50 utterances and you count 100 words the MLU would be 2
Me go ( 2 words)
I want to go to the zoo. ( 7 words)
Yup. ( pause) I hungry . ( Two sentences 1st has 1 word, 2nd 2 words)
Purpose:
The expectation is NOT that you are able to make a complex analysis of language but more that you have an understanding of what a typical child’s conversation might be.
This is to allow us to have a dialogue about language skills.
It will serve as a comparison even in terms of how you were able to gather the sample.
Language Samples
The professional literature in speech language pathology provides several best practices guidelines with regard to obtaining and analyzing valid language
sampling procedures (for example, Evans& Craig, 1992; Miller, 1996) to use as abasis for eligibility decisions:
• To obtain a valid sample for analysis, elliptical responses should be minimized by avoiding wh-question prompts
and yes/no questions.
When children are prompted to converse through frequent what-where-which-or-when questions, the resulting language data (including MLU)
is often skewed and yields invalid findings. Alternative conversational prompts,including modeling and “Iwonder about…” statements are
preferable.
- The standards for language sample is that each sample should consist of between 50 and 100 consecutive utterances in one
sampling context.• Sampling in more than one context and using more than one sample elicitation task (e.g., free play, conversation, narrative) is important since
a sampling context itself constrains the characteristics of the language that a student will use (Miller, et al. 2005; Nippold,Hesketh, Duthie, & Mansfield,2005). In order to use any of the several normed databases for comparing a student’s language sample performance to peers,
it is essential that speech language pathologists use that same elicitation tasks and contexts as those on which the norms were developed.
• At some point in the language sampling process the speech-language pathologist must create for the student sampling situations that
stress and challenge the student’s language use and language system (Lahey, 1990).Informal play, interview, or
conversational situations may
http://speech-language-therapy.com/BrownsStages.htm
If you are really fascination by language samples this is a great study of the comparison between interview and free play